Deep Grooves

“I’m seeing a cavity.”

I remember sitting there, confused and embarrassed. We were brushing, limiting sugar, doing everything “right.”

The dentist paused, noticing my reaction, and said gently, “He has deep grooves in his molars. It’s genetic.” And just like that, something shifted. It wasn’t about failure. It was about structure.

How often do we mistake what we’ve inherited for something we’ve done wrong?

Some things aren’t about effort or discipline. They’re about vulnerability. We all have “deep grooves” somewhere—patterns, tendencies, sensitivities that run deeper than habit.

And maybe the goal isn’t to remove them. Maybe it’s to learn how to care for them.

Because you can’t brush away inheritance. But you can become aware of it, and awareness changes everything.

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